Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

 

 

You would never know from the weather, but we are a week into March, and it is time to think about St. Patrick's Day care packages for college students.  This week's Atlantic Hearts Sketch screamed for shamrocks:

AND it just so happens that the theme of this week's Heart 2 Heart Challenge is "It's a Triple Play!"  Don't you just love it when two of you favorite challenges compliment each other so perfectly?  To make the shamrocks I adapted Allisa Chilton's four leaf clover.  For each one I cut 6 hearts using Close to My Heart's Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge.  After sponging their edges with New England Ivy, I attached three to the card and scored the other three down the middle and folded them.  Then I curled the outer sides slightly downward and glued only the center folds to the card so that the edges could lift up like a butterfly. 

 Next it was time to make the bottom border.  I popped the Paper Lace cartridge into my Cricut, selected a Celtic sort of border, and confidently hit the "fit to length" button assuming that I would get a four inch border.  Maybe using some other cartridges I would have, but using this one the machine selected the closest corresponding height in quarter inch increments which was  .75 inches and cut a border that was way too short.  Next I turned off "fit to length" and tried setting the size to one inch which cut a border that was too long.  Feeling a bit like Goldilocks, I remembered seeing in a CTMH video (which I haven't been able to find to link to) that you could adjust the settings to centimeters and millimeters.  I could deal with the metric system if it would allow me to fine tune the length.  After calculating the size I needed in centimeters, I pressed the settings button and scrolled through to discover that not only can you set the Cricut to cut in centimeters and millimeters, you can set it to cut in tenths of an inch increments rather than the default one fourth inch increments.  Preferring to stick with the measuring system I know, I selected tenths of an inch, set the size to .90 and cut a border that was juuuuust right!

 

 

I cut the backing, attached the border, slapped on a few Green Epoxy Bubbles, and thought  I was done.  I even took the photo for this blog:

BUT, the more I looked at it, the unhappier I became.  It needed some pop.  I could stamp the sentiment in black on the front rather than inside, but then I would need to find a way to put some black somewhere else to make it balance.  I couldn't use CTMH's new Black Epoxy Bubbles because they were too big and would detract from the Celtic design.  Then I found these small black faux pearls that I had bought at Michael's which were more the size of CTMH's retired Black Opaques and would not be so in your face.  Then, for good measure, I used a narrow black marker to trace along one side of each stem.

And that, y'all, is how I ended up with the Heart 2 Heart Triple Play Atlantic Hearts Sketch card that you see at the top of this post.  I just wish I had posted this right after I finished making it Tuesday night because on Wednesday morning I saw that Christina Berger of the Atlantic Hearts design team made shamrocks like mine.  That just goes to show that great minds think alike, lol.  Thank you for stopping by!  Now please go check out the other fabulous entries at these challenges or maybe even enter yourself.  Until next time, Hansi

Materials used, all Close to My Heart unless otherwise noted:
Paper:  Flirty (retired), White Daisy, New England Ivy, and Sweet Leaf cardstock
Ink:  New England Ivy, Black plus a black marker
Stamp:  Holiday Tags
Embellishments:  Green Epoxy Bubbles, Black Adhesive Faux Pearls by Recollections
Other:  Art Philosophy and Paper Lace by Provocraft Cricut cartridges